Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Spaceship Two

On Monday 7th December Virgin Galactic unveiled SpaceShipTwo to the world at Mojave Spaceport, California. 800 press, future astronauts and VIP guests gathered in the desert for a press conference and to view the roll out of the world’s first commercial spaceline.

They called it the VSS Enterprise - a boringly obvious name, I was hoping they'd use the Virgin Records back catalogue for inspiration: the VSS Tubular Bells, the VSS Human League or even the VSS Never Mind the Bollocks!

There is nothing wrong with the name Enterprise, it is synonymous with our eventual expansion into the solar system and the greater universe.

Gene Rodenberry pointed the way, and through his inspiration we already have a space shuttle Enterprise. In a way this name keeps hope and the dream moving from our fictional past to our bright future.

A dystopian future? Hmmmm? Feels like it. Some inner cities look like it. The news would have you believe it.

Me not so much an optimist, just vaguely sense that the fuckwits in charge shot themselves in the foot with the expenses scandal, and the banks shot us all in the foot with their greed.

For me and numerous friends and colleagues this has meant a radical change in our attitude, and our relationship with work and work culture. To the point that when shorter working weeks were offered, they were taken, because the one thing you can't buy back is time.

If more people can be satisfied with time rather than cash, then there is hope. We don't need an apocalyptic plague to reduce our numbers, or a global war. What we need is (in the absence of a benevolent dictator or AI), the powers that be to start to work for the common good of all those things that we all need to survive, energy, food, shelter. As long as we are selfish with these things we are doomed to your dystopia.

At the root of all evil, nowadays is not money, that’s just the tinsel. The real root of all evil today is energy insecurity. Global warming and all this other shit is just a front for saying “we’ve invested in the wrong technologies for too long, and developed the wrong attitudes in our citizenry”.

ScFi show us our futures, the boom bang one is all very exciting, but who wants to live in that. No. I think, that once we’ve been shook up a little, and held in a state of anxiety, that there will be a subtle shift in what we pay for and how we pay for it, and will then carry on business as usual.

Your books, don’t speak to me of a dystopian future… in fact the exact opposite. Runcible culture ‘n all. It's just out on the line is a bit wafty; Masada for instance, Cull just had dangerous fauna and no historical points of reference for it’s developing “post being stranded citizens”, Viridien seemed like a nice place. In all cases (apart from Cowl) your earth is a nice place, just set upon by arseholes from somewhere else once in a while…